What is
Community Council?
As it stands, the Community Council (CC) is an intersectional space where students, faculty, and staff come together to discuss non-academic issues on campus and share mutual concerns. The Vice President for Student Affairs (or designee) and the elected student serve as co-chairs of Community Council.
The Council has the ability to:
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Make recommendations to specific offices or members of the administration
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Receive matters for consideration from the President and from the Senior Leadership Group (SLG)
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Offer direct feedback to the President and the SLG
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Make decisions and then implements those decisions as College policy
As a consultative body that makes recommendations to specific offices or members of the administration on issues that affect the entire College community, the CC necessitates the active participation of all stakeholders, well-organized deliberation, and careful analysis of all interests and concerns.
If this is your first time hearing about the CC, no worries. Not many students know what the Community Council is—I hope to remedy that by bolstering the forum’s mission, structure, and visibility.
Welcome!
Hey, Midd! My name is Sophia Lundberg (she/her/hers) and I’m a senior Feb here at the College. My most recent hometown is Philadelphia, PA. I major in International Politics & Economics.
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Next fall with be my last semester here at the College. When I look back at the past several years, I know that my time in Middlebury has been marked by stress and pain, but also by incredible amounts of growth and transformation.
The driving force of the remaining time that I have here is this:
to leave Middlebury better than how I found it and to leave it better than how it found me.
To make something better is to improve upon and surpass what is already there. I believe that making Middlebury a better place means honoring and building off of the work that I’ve already been engaged in as one of the two current SGA Vice Presidents. For me, this has meant pushing for honest and transparent communication, engaging in person-to-person outreach, and establishing a good rapport with students, faculty, staff, and administration in every single effort or initiative that I’ve been a part of.
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Every day, students do incredible things in response to the ideas and systems they encounter. Every day, faculty show up to the classroom to share their knowledge and to challenge our understandings of the world around us. Every day, staff and administration put immense amounts of work into keeping our campus alive and well. We all breathe life into this place, are inexplicably connected by it, and are simultaneously impacted by the environment and institutional culture that we share.
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What a “better” Middlebury looks like will be up to us as a community. It will be up to our collective ability to communicate and listen to each other with empathy and grace. We must talk across difference, acknowledge the harm we may cause one another, and hold ourselves accountable to one another.
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Building community is not simple but it is an endeavor well worth the effort. I’m committed to engaging in conversations, making strangers into familiar faces, and celebrating the individuals that make up our community.
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With all of this in mind, I’m running to be the Co-Chair of Community Council for Fall 2021. I hope you’ll give me the opportunity to continue shaping this culture so as to make this campus and this community a more just, equitable, accessible, and welcoming place.